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43 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Depends on the output as it will need to either have an external air feed or a decent flow rate into the room you have the stove in. 

 

 

I thought Log Burner + MVHR = External Air Feed Only?

 

Wouldn't any room aspirated stove cause so much air leakage it would upset the MVHR air exchange balance.

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11 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

Lets make this easy @jpinthehouse but painful.

Forget the stove.

 

Yes. We've got 3 plus a coal Rayburn (our house needs heating) and they are almost unused - one was lit twice this winter.

 

They are messy, wasteful of space and will almost certainly overheat your rooms if you have reasonable insulation, when run hot enough to minimise pollution.

 

Although I understand the appeal I'm completely bemused by people with near passive houses insisting on installing them.

 

(And they're stupidly expensive for what they are!)

Edited by billt
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10 hours ago, PeterW said:

Only in a very tightly sealed house -    if you go airtight then you do need some sort of feed as BRegs irrespective of the MVHR issue once below a certain limit. 

 

 

Ok fair enough, I am still on the nursery slopes of my self build learning curve.

 

I was planning to design in a through the floor air feed for my wood burner before my build commences. If, to guess a number, I can get my brick & block, concrete beam floor house down to a score of 5 for air tightness i.e. twice as good as current building regulations, would a sealed stove with an external air feed be a wasted endeavour?

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You can get a decent build down to a very low score just with attention to detail and a few rolls of airtight tape. Windows and doors are your problem, as are any service penetrations. 

 

The problem you will face is the stove will dictate the location of the vent - some have below, some have rear entry vents. You may need to decide that first. 

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27 minutes ago, billt said:

 

Yes. We've got 3 plus a coal Rayburn (our house needs heating) and they are almost unused - one was lit twice this winter.

 

They are messy, wasteful of space and will almost certainly overheat your rooms if you have reasonable insulation, when run hot enough to minimise pollution.

 

Although I understand the appeal I'm completely bemused by people with near passive houses insisting on installing them.

 

(And they're stupidly expensive for what they are!)

 

 

I have only frequented this forum for 3 weeks and it is becoming apparent that solid fuel heating is the closest this forum gets to a political schism.

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3 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I have only frequented this forum for 3 weeks and it is becoming apparent that solid fuel heating is the closest this forum gets to a political schism.

Imagine if you were an ipad user with a wood burning stove and a dirty landrover...... devil incarnate..... 

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6 minutes ago, PeterW said:

You can get a decent build down to a very low score just with attention to detail and a few rolls of airtight tape. Windows and doors are your problem, as are any service penetrations. 

 

 

This is encouraging to hear and I hope air tightness is where a rookie like me can make a difference by prowling around after 5pm with an array of sealant guns. I cannot find public domain info covering airtight techniques for conventional brick & block designs.

 

9 minutes ago, PeterW said:

The problem you will face is the stove will dictate the location of the vent - some have below, some have rear entry vents. You may need to decide that first. 

 

 

Indeed. I am already discovering that apparent late stage build events need to be designed in detail before foundations are poured e.g. adopting a wall hung toilet design can move an upper floor soil pipe exit by two feet which then means an inconsequential casement window in the room below needs to shuffled a few bricks left or right but oh no that puts the window aperture too close to a 90 degree turn in block work.

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13 minutes ago, Cpd said:

Imagine if you were an ipad user with a wood burning stove and a dirty landrover...... devil incarnate..... 

 

Well that’s me and a few others going to somewhere warm when we shuffle off this mortal coil 9_9

 

The issue is when you have passive level insulation and an over size WBS - the heat has nowhere to go. 

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Yes i really like the idea of putting a really small wbs in the cottage, there was an open fire for years and then a big wbs but with all the improved insulation and future ufh the need becomes one of fun rather than function. I know we have talked this subject to death but.....  due to my remote location and my caveman instincts i am still going to fit one. Finding the “right” small stove will be the challenge...... i will be sitting there overheating... reading about how to repair my fuel guzzling landrover on my iPad. 

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I think the real issue with a WBS is you cannot turn them off instantly. Perhaps people stoke them up too much to get nice dancing flames then find out the room is hot enough but you can't just turn it off straight away and by the time it runs down, you're too hot.  The issue with a passive house is it then takes a very long time indeed to cool down again.

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I think part of the problem is if you are used to an open fire is desire to keep stoking and feeding it. We have our heating profile for the upstairs lounge without and evening boost as we use the stove. 

That said we have a smallish stove (6kw) in a decent room. 36sqm. We can run that without boiling ourselves for an hour or two with ease. 

Why? We like the flames and we live in a wood..

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23 minutes ago, PeterW said:

The issue is when you have passive level insulation and an over size WBS - the heat has nowhere to go

 

 

I have a cunning plan for heat dumping, they are called opening sash windows. Trouble is that will confuse the MVHR system and now I am worrying that my house will go critical, will unstable isotopes emitted up the chimney from my wood burner get caught in the EMF field of my racing MVHR system and trigger nuclear fusion?

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42 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

I have a cunning plan for heat dumping, they are called opening sash windows. Trouble is that will confuse the MVHR system and now I am worrying that my house will go critical, will unstable isotopes emitted up the chimney from my wood burner get caught in the EMF field of my racing MVHR system and trigger nuclear fusion?

DrBrown.jpg.146ec4331fb917a3466cf9c33322291e.jpg

"eureka, Marty! We'll just open the windows" :D

So, to clarify, its cold, in your low-energy house, so you light the stove and then open all the windows to get the smoke and heat out? 

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"This is encouraging to hear and I hope air tightness is where a rookie like me can make a difference by prowling around after 5pm with an array of sealant guns. I cannot find public domain info covering airtight techniques for conventional brick & block designs."

 

if you are trying to seal tbe house with sealant the horse has already bolted.

Airtightness needs to be planned from the start of the build. 

Google " Denby Dale passive house" or " Golcar passive house" or " Tonys house"

lots of info on traditional block and cavity build and how to make them airtight.

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16 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

So, to clarify, its cold, in your low-energy house, so you light the stove and then open all the windows to get the smoke and heat out? 

 

 

Not quite :D

 

The starting point is no mains gas, a garden that will not accommodate a regular LPG tank and a dislike of oil heating having lived with it for 4 winters. Cooking via LPG.

 

From a social perspective the happiest occasions in the last few years have been centered around an open fire with for example the grand daughter staying overnight and playing with her dolls house.

 

My current tentative heating design will be based on a 250 l thermal store connected to economy 7, a wood burning stove/boiler and an lpg gas boiler for urgent top up. On a typical working day a brief 6 am central heating blast should bump the house temperature up to a tolerable 18 degrees. At 4 pm the residual thermal store heat should be enough to warm the house then at say 7pm we can elect to fire up the woodburner stove or rely on LPG heating top up if it is a mild day.

 

My concern is heat regulation on those freezing deep winter weekends. If OH gets carried away with stoking the stove then after a long burn the stove's boiler water circuit might struggle to shed heat. I hope that with sufficient water volume the system will not be too thermally spikey. My current guess for total water volume is 200 + 70 (rads) + 25 (pipes), that should soak up a lot of heat and then there are those sash windows.  

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7 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Well I have built a well insulated, airtight ( I hope) newbuild with a small wood burner that has a dedicated under slab air feed pipe. Yes it may get a bit warm for me but never too warm for SWMBO?

Are you ready for your air test yet John?

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